~ Dr.Suneel Sethi's Blog

Monthly Archives: March 2012

You can’t live a happy, successful, fulfilling life if you’re spending all your energy tolerating things that shouldn’t be tolerated. Sometimes you need to put your foot down. Needless tolerance can bleed you dry of energy and make it impossible for you to function effectively. Here are some suggestions on how to say no to stress by avoiding or stop tolerating some or all of these situations in your life:

Negative thinking. What do you typically think about? How far you’ve come, or how far you have to go? Your strengths or your weaknesses? The best that could happen or the worst that might come to be? Pay attention to your self-talk. Because maybe, just maybe, the only thing that needs to shift in order for you to experience more happiness, more love, and more success, is your way of thinking. The sun is always shining on some part of your life. Your mind is your sacred space. You can close the windows and darken your space, or you can open the windows and let light in. It’s your choice.

Other people’s negativity. You do not have control over what others say and do; but you do have control over whether or not you will allow them to say and do these things to you. You alone can deny their poisonous words and actions from invading your heart and mind. If you don’t value yourself, look out for yourself, and stick up for yourself, you’re sabotaging yourself. Remember, if you do not respect your sacred inner space, no one else will either.

Inaction. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. The acquisition of knowledge doesn’t mean you’re growing; growing happens when what you know changes how you live. You can’t change anything or make any sort of progress by sitting back and thinking about it. The best time to start is now.

Dishonesty. Don’t be dishonest and don’t put up with people who are. Inner peace is being able to rest at night knowing you haven’t used or taken advantage of anyone to get to where you are in life. Living a life of honesty creates peace of mind, and peace of mind is priceless. Period.

Work environment or career you hate. If you catch yourself working hard and loving every minute of it, don’t stop. You’re on to something big. Because hard work isn’t hard when you concentrate on your passions. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t settle on the first or second career field you dabble in. Keep searching. Eventually you will find work you love to do.

Disorganized and unprepared. Clear the clutter. Get rid of stuff you don’t use. Get up 30 minutes earlier so you don’t have to rush around like a mad man. That 30 minutes will help you avoid speeding tickets, tardiness and other unnecessary headaches.

Past mistakes and regrets. The next time you decide to unclutter your life and clean up your space, start with the things that are truly useless, like old regrets, shame, and anger. If you feel like your ship is sinking, it might be a good time to throw out the stuff that’s been weighing it down. Let it go. You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep rereading your previous one.

Personal debt. Do not live life trying to fool yourself into thinking wealth is measured in material objects. Manage your money wisely so your money does not manage you. Live a comfortable life, not a wasteful one. Do not buy stuff you do not need. Do not spend to impress others. Always live well below your means. Financial debt causes stress and heartache.

Unhealthy relationships. You don’t need lots of friends to be happy; just a few real ones who appreciate you for who you are. Oftentimes walking away has nothing to do with weakness, and everything to do with strength. We walk away not because we want others to realize our worth, but because we finally realize our own worth. Choose your relationships wisely. Being alone will never cause as much loneliness as the wrong relationships. Be with people who know your worth.

Mediocrity. It’s not always about trying to fix something that’s broken. Sometimes it’s about starting over and creating something better. Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly. Sometimes growing up means growing apart from old habits, relationships, and situations, and finding something new that truly moves you- something that gets you so excited you can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning. That’s what life is all about. Don’t settle.

Reluctance. Don’t censor yourself. Speak the truth – your truth – always. Everyone has this little watchdog inside their head. It’s always there watching you. It was born and raised by your family, friends, coworkers and society at large, and its sole purpose is to watch you and make sure you stay in line. And once you become accustomed to the watchdog’s presence, you begin to think it’s opinion of what’s acceptable and unacceptable are absolute truths. But they’re not truths; they’re just other people’s opinions. Remember, the watchdog is just a watchdog, he just watches. He can’t actually control you. He can’t do anything about it if you decide to rise up and go against the grain. No, you shouldn’t start shouting obscenities and acting like a fool. But you must say what you need to say, when you need to say it. It may be your only chance to do so.

Like this:

What behaviors define highly productive people? What habits and strategies make them consistently more productive than others? What can you do to increase your own productivity?

Being highly productive is not an innate talent; it’s simply a matter of organizing your life so that you can efficiently get the right things done. Here are some ideas to get you started…

Set and pursue SMART goals. These goals must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

Break down goals into realistic, high impact tasks. Take your primary goal and divide it into smaller and smaller chunks until you have a list of realistic tasks, each of which can be accomplished in a few hours. Each of these smaller goals is supported by even more granular sub-goals and associated daily tasks. Then work on the next unfinished, available tasks that will have the greatest impact at the current time. It is these small daily tasks that, over time, drive larger achievement.

Focus on being productive, not being busy. Stop and ask yourself if what you’re working on is worth the effort. Is it bringing you in the same direction as your goals? Don’t just get things done; get the right things done. Don’t get caught up in odd jobs, even those that seem urgent, unless they are also important. Results are always more important than the time it takes to achieve them.

Organize your space. Keeping both your living and working spaces organized is crucial. Highly productive people have systems in place to help them find what they need when they need it- they can quickly locate the information required to support their activities. When you’re disorganized, that extra time spent looking for a phone number, email address or a certain file forces you to drop your focus.

Create and observe a list of things not to do. Create one and post it up in your workspace where you can see it. It might seem amusing, but it’s an incredibly useful tool for keeping track of unproductive habits, like checking emails, Face book and Twitter, randomly browsing news websites, etc.

Set specific time slots. Reply to emails, voice mails, and texts at set times. Set specific time slots 2-3 times a day to deal with incoming communication (e.g. once at 8 am, once at 11am, once at 4 pm), and set a reasonable max duration for each time slot. Unless an emergency arises, stick to this practice. This directly ties into the ideas of single tasking and distraction avoidance.

Invest a little time to save a lot of time. How can you spend a little time right now in order to save a lot of time in the future? Think about the tasks you perform over and over throughout a work week. Is there a more efficient way? Is there a shortcut you can learn? Is there a way to automate or delegate it? Perhaps you can complete a particular task in 30 minutes, and it would take two hours to put in place a more efficient method. If that 30 minute task must be completed every day, and a two hour fix would cut it to 15 minutes or less each time, it’s a fix well worth implementing. A simple way of doing this is to use technology to automate tasks (email filters, automatic bill payments, etc.). Also, teaching someone to help you and delegating work is another option. The more you automate and delegate, the more you can get done with the same level of effort.

Commit to one thing at a time. Studies have shown that changing tasks more than 10 times during an 8-hour segment of work drops a person’s IQ by an average of 10-15 points. Quickly switching from task to task makes the mind less efficient. Stop multitasking, and start getting the important things done properly. Single-tasking helps you focus more intently on one task so you can finish it properly, rather than having many tasks started and nothing finished.

Eliminate distractions while you work. Do whatever it takes to create a quiet, distraction free environment where you can focus on your work. You can’t remain in hiding forever, but you can be twice as productive while you are. Eliminating all distractions for a set time while you work is one of the most effective ways to get things done. So, lock your door, turn off your phone, close your email application, disconnect your internet connection, etc.

Put first things first. Our minds operate at peak performance in the morning hours when we’re well rested and it would be foolish to use this time for a trivial task like reading emails. These peak performance hours should be 100% dedicated to working on the tasks that bring you closer to your goals. Highly productive people recognize that not all hours are created equal, and they strategically account for this when planning their day.

Work in 90 minute intervals. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Tony Schwartz, author of the NY Times bestseller The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, makes the case for working in no more than 90 consecutive minutes before a short break. Schwartz says, “There is a rhythm in our bodies that operates in 90-minute intervals. That rhythm is the ultradian rhythm, which moves between high arousal and fatigue. If you’re working over a period of 90 minutes, there are all kinds of indicators in your physiology of fatigue; so what your body is really saying to you is, ‘Give me a break. Refuel me.’”

Narrow the number of ventures. The commitment to be productive is not always the biggest challenge, narrowing the number of ventures to be productive in is. Even when you have the knowledge and ability to access highly productive states, you get to a point where being simultaneously productive on too many fronts at once causes all activities to slow down, standstill, and sometimes even slide backwards. In other words, say “no” when you should.

The best quote to sum up the above, in the words of Bruce Lee, the great master of martial arts, “absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.”

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“Buddha” meaning “awakened one” or “the enlightened one”.The word Buddha is a title for the first awakened being in an era. Siddhartha Gautama Buddha was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. He later taught throughout regions of eastern India such as Magadha and Kosala.

The time of Gautama Buddha’s birth and death are dated by historians as c. 563 BCE to 483 BCE but more recent opinion dates his death to between 486 and 483 BCE or, according to some, between 411 and 400 BCE. UNESCO lists Lumbini in Nepal, as a world heritage site and birthplace of Gautama Buddha. There are also claims about birth place of Gautama Buddha to be Kapilavastu at Piprahwa in Uttar Pradesh, or Kapileswara in Orissa, modern India.

Gautama is the primary figure in Buddhism, and accounts of his life, discourses, and monastic rules are believed by Buddhists to have been summarized after his death and memorized by his followers. Various collections of teachings attributed to him were passed down by oral tradition, and first committed to writing about 400 years later. Given below are some of his popular quotes or teachings:

If a man who enjoys a lesser happiness beholds a greater one, let him leave aside the lesser to gain the greater.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, nor by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

There is nothing as disobedient as an undisciplined mind, and there is nothing as obedient as a disciplined mind.

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind.

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.

He who experiences the unity of life sees his own self in all beings, and all beings in his own self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

The mind is the source of happiness and unhappiness.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And the habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love, born out of concern for all beings.

Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.

Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds. Shine.

Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings — that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another. If these minds love one another the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one another it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden.

Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the ox that draws it.

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, which lures him to evil ways.

Do not dwell in the past; do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

The world, indeed, is like a dream and the treasures of the world are an alluring mirage! Like the apparent distances in a picture, things have no reality in themselves, but they are like heat haze.

Our theories of the eternal are as valuable as are those which a chick which has not broken its way through its shell might form of the outside world.

On life’s journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

We are formed and molded by our thoughts. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.